D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Maxperson]

Which is largely the start of the conversation chain that led to my very cherry picked response being called out. After all, the quoted part of my response missed 90% of the response in order to focus on a single sentence out of context.

I wouldn't know about that. I was talking about it with @hawkeyefan, which was the start of combat rules in my posts.

 

[Maxperson]

No. I didn't. I can see why you would have thought that, but when I said, no that's not what I meant, why would you double down and tell me that yes, I did?

It wasn't a double down on anything. People here often don't realize what their words mean, so I was just pointing out that as you acknowledged in your response, meant what I originally responded to you with.

Anyway, you didn't mean it and it's resolved now, so no worries.

 

[Faolyn]

Well, rather obviously, I agree here. But, I would point out that the defense of DM's trend here is VERY strong. Any criticism of DM practices or, really, D&D, is met with pretty strong resistance. I mean, good grief, I got dogpiled for saying that I thought that it was faster to get a sandbox off the ground in a different system, which, apparently meant that I thought D&D was a bad system for sandboxing. A point that was repeated yet again not that many pages ago.

Despite literally proving that it's faster to get a sandbox (not better, not more satisfying, FASTER only) in other systems, it's automatically taken as me saying D&D is bad. We see this over and over again when any criticism of D&D is taken as an attack on either the game or playstyle.

Thus the genesis of this thread.

Dude. You refused to accept that D&D could be done as a sandbox with minimal prep. You refused to accept that some GMs enjoy worldbuilding and prepping and have the time to do so. You kept making strawmen about D&D players "needing" 300-page worldbooks to play the game and D&D GMs "needing" to spend 400 hours prepping and dozens of books to run.

People weren't dogpiling you for saying other games were faster. They were dogpiling you for completely dismissing everyone else's' preferences because they weren't inherently as fast to prep as your preferences no matter how many times they said they didn't care about the speed.

 

[robertsconley]

Irrelevant.

The statement was "Games MUST have combat rules that are more complex than social rules". That's the argument. "I like complex combat rules and simple social rules" is a perfectly acceptable statement that would get zero push back from me.

I went back up the chain of posts through six exchanges, and did not see that quote. It would be helpful to cite the quote in question.

But, again, this is another example of why these conversations are so exhausting. The constantly shifting goalposts. I certainly made no qualitative statements about which is better, although, again, it's being taken as such. So, instead of arguing with me for pointing out an easily falsifiable statement - "All RPG'S MUST have combat rules that are more complex than social rules" - why don't you argue with the original false statement?

Like I said before, I went up the chain of posts and did not see that statement. So I responded to what I did see.

Which was

There is absolutely no need for combat rules to be more complex than non-combat rules. We simply accept this because... conservatism in the fandom.

So, breaking that down.

• STATEMENT: There is absolutely no need for combat rules to be more complex than non-combat rules
• ASSERTION: We simply accept this
• CONCLUSION: because... conservatism in the fandom.

I disagreed with your conclusion and why. I responded to this specifically because the point you made stands on it own merits without referencing the larger conversation. I don't need to understand that at some point upthread, somebody asserted that "all RPGs must have combat rules more complex than social rules". I took your unqualified statement that there is "absolutely no need" at face value, looked at what you asserted, and found your conclusion to be inaccurate. My conclusion is that the need was created by the popularity of complex combat systems as a source of enjoyment, versus the popularity of complex social systems as a source of enjoyment.


That's not shifting the goalpost; it's addressing the point you just made.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That's ridiculous advice. Why would you waste your time listening to that GM tell you some boring story? Or let you sit around planning only to pull out the rug if it's not the story she wants to tell?

Yeah, I would consider it almost the epitome of bad GMing. What kind of an arse do you need to be to just blatantly spoil the players fun? For what? What was gained? I don't even comprehend what would be an excuse for that. Frankly, I've pretty much never walked from a game, but something like that would probably do it.

 

[Faolyn]

But, you also made point of saying that the player moved on to other games more to his taste. IOW, it was a player problem that he didn't bite onto your hook. So, it's not really all that much about objective DMing is it? After all, if it was, then ignoring the plot hook would have been zero problem and wouldn't even be remarkable since it should happen all the time.

No. He was younger than the rest of us but both his parents were Basic/1e grognards who had raised him on that type of game, and he preferred it to 5e, GURPS, or the other systems we typically played at the time. He also preferred more combat-heavy games than the rest of us do. He had a chance to join a 1e game that happened to be run at the same time we met up for our games and took it.

I brought up that incident not because I wanted to talk about a problem player but to show how sometimes, players simply don't do what the GM was hoping they would do--which I'm sure you know. A Good GM will roll with that and a Bad GM won't. You said nobody else who played under your anti-heist DM said they felt railroaded. Your group didn't want to engage with the module and got railroaded. I'd wager her other groups didn't go that far off the rails; hence there was no need for her to railroad them the way she did your group.

But then why not just ask them what they are interested in?

I did. He said he was interested in playing it. He chose not to bite that hook. The end.

 

[Maxperson]

Counter anecdote time.

I was playing in a D&D campaign about the same time, and the DM was using Keep on the Borderlands as a base. No problems. The DM was very adamant that this was a sandbox type campaign with the players having a lot of freedom. The group decided to rob the jewel merchant in the Keep. We spent most of an entire session planning the heist, doing tons of RP in character, learning the layout of things, getting schedules all that sort of thing. We wrap up the session with the plan in place and we would play it out the next session. All week the players are talking about this. The entire group is really excited.

Next week starts and the jewel merchant has closed up shop and left in the middle of the night. No warning, no note, absolutely no trail left behind. Can't follow him, he's got too much of a lead.

Now, I've told this story before on these boards and had multiple people say that the DM is not, in any way, railroading here. This was just the "objective" results of the campaign. The group quit on the spot. We all, as a group, thanked the DM politely and walked. The DM continued to have quite successful games with other groups that swore up and down that she wasn't railroading.

So, no, I really don't think terrible DM's are all dysfunctional, socially inept individuals. And, again, this is why I talk about, from the player's perspective, good and bad DM's look and do exactly the same thing and it's often impossible to tell the difference.

This is the first time I've seen this story. It's not railroading as you guys weren't forced down a path, BUT the merchant also should not have known to flee like that. That was abuse to DM power. You were still wronged there.

 

[Maxperson]

The statement was "Games MUST have combat rules that are more complex than social rules". That's the argument. "I like complex combat rules and simple social rules" is a perfectly acceptable statement that would get zero push back from me.

I've missed many pages of posts since the thread moves so quickly. Who made that argument? I know for my part I was just saying that the combat rules are complex to make sure they are done well and to avoid confusion as much as possible.

Complex social rules aren't a problem, even though I think them unnecessary. So long as they don't force the PCs to do things the player knows that the PC wouldn't do. Non-magical mind control is a major problem to me.

 

[Faolyn]

I went back up the chain of posts through six exchanges, and did not see that quote. It would be helpful to cite the quote in question.

So the quote was apparently from Maxperson in reply to @hawkeyefan and went as follows:

Combat has more rules, because it's a complex part of the game. I don't think it has that many rules because of uncertainty. Unless you are saying that the complexity of combat creates confusion which also means uncertainty, and so the combat rules are needed. That I can agree with.

And I'm about 95% sure that they were talking solely about D&D, not all games. Also, it appears they were talking about trust between player and DM, not about rules for combat versus rules for social engagement like @Hussar claimed. The rules are needed (or not needed) because of how much trust is between the player and DM, not because combat is inherently more complex than social engagement.

 

[Faolyn]

Yeah, I would consider it almost the epitome of bad GMing. What kind of an arse do you need to be to just blatantly spoil the players fun? For what? What was gained? I don't even comprehend what would be an excuse for that. Frankly, I've pretty much never walked from a game, but something like that would probably do it.

Agreed. The very best-case scenario I can think of is that the GM had some long game in mind but did such a terrible job leaving clues (or not leaving clues, as it happened) that the players gave up in disgust. And I don't blame them for doing so.